by Eric Beetner
“No. I know how shitty the polls are. I thought that’s why we did this whole drug war thing.”
“It is.” Lewis walked the floor of the mayor’s office like he owned it and Mayor O’Brien was only renting space. “That made you look tough on crime. This makes you look vulnerable. The worried father. You yourself a victim of these evil drug kingpins after your vow to take them down.”
“I am a worried father. You know what Tat is capable of.”
Lewis maintained his calm. “It’s a show. He’s made no ransom, just the idiotic call to repeal the new crackdown. Well, gimmie a fucking break. He’s busting your balls and we might as well use this because this could be the only thing that might swing this election for you. We could get a ten-point bump from a missing daughter, come on.”
“Jesus, Lewis. You’re talking about my only child.”
“I’m talking about your job. Lauren will be fine. Let’s not squander the opportunity that just fell in our laps.”
O’Brien rubbed the bridge of his nose. His all-American face had been carved through with lines during his first term. The golden boy mayor of last election was gone. He needed more makeup now when appearing on TV. He’d started to dye his hair. The entitled, silver-spoon-fed pretty boy was what people saw these days, sucking on the teat of special interests.
And they were right.
Mayor O’Brien stared at his subordinate. This brash kid from Yale who did everything by the manual for political assholes. But Lewis had steered him into the mayor’s office and he was handling this latest downturn in public opinion. Lewis could be trusted. O’Brien studied the young man and hoped like hell it was true.
“Okay, what do you want? A press conference?”
“We’ll work that out when we’re closer. Let’s see how this guy does first.”
“And who is he again? Some kind of special forces or something?”
Lewis turned to leave, exercising his control over the conversation. “Some crooked cop. They’ve got him by the balls so he has to do whatever they say.”
“What the…? Is that really the best guy to go and get my daughter back?”
Lewis shrugged. “He’s the guy they picked, so he’s the guy we’ve got.”
Lewis ducked out, leaving O’Brien alone thinking about hair dyes for when he stood in front of the press to announce his daughter had been saved. Or to tell them she was dead.
Dahlia watched the printer as it sucked up paper and laser jetted ink onto them. The steady noise filled the otherwise quiet house. For a few weeks they had the exuberant sounds of a puppy, but now even that was gone. Their last-ditch effort to have something to love in the house. If it couldn’t be each other, maybe a third party would remind them what it felt like. When the puppy started panting and falling over, Dahlia thought for a moment the dog was being slowly asphyxiated by the toxic air in the house. The animosity and the simmering suspicion between the puppy’s new owners.
Congenital heart defect was the real reason. A hole in his heart. Neither of them even cried. It all seemed so predestined. Last night, the puppy died quietly in his crate. Dale promised they would bury him in the backyard under a stone, but then he got that urgent call to come in to the station…
Dahlia leaned down and pulled the pages out of the printer. Directions to the clinic. She stared at the final destination, fifty-six miles away. The appointment time. Dale being late tonight would be a good thing. The papers were still warm from the printer but going cold. Like the life inside her. The one she didn’t need. Didn’t want. Not with Dale. Still…
The front door opened and Dahlia flipped the papers to the blank side and tried to hide the surprise on her face.
Dale looked somehow ashamed for being in his own home. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“I only have a short time. So…do you want to…?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
Even for a funeral it was somber. The pup hadn’t had time to get very big so Dale didn’t need to dig a large hole. Five shovelfuls did the trick. Dahlia did finally cry when Dale set the black plastic trash bag in the ground. But she didn’t feel like her tears were all for the dog.
Dale put his arm around her shoulder and warmth passed between them. A current of possibility, a spark that all was not lost. Neither one of them had any words for the dog or for their marriage. Finally, Dale cleared his throat.
“I gotta get going.”
She moved away from his touch.
Dale started filling the hole. “When I get back, we should talk. Some things at work…things are different.”
“Okay.” What did that mean?
He set the shovel in the ground and leaned on it. “Hey, Dahl? I love you, okay?”
Yes, make it okay. Love him back and it will be okay. And she did love him. Somewhere in there. In memories. In photos. In his arm around her, same as it ever was. “I love you too, Dale. We’ll talk when you get back.”
“Yeah. When I get home.”
She could tell there was a lot on his mind. A heavier weight than usual, which must have been crushing him. She let him go with a brushed kiss on the cheek. She had her own places to be that afternoon.
After he’d gone, she lifted her printed directions off the desk. The pages in Dahlia’s hands had gone cold.
CHAPTER 3
Dale was overfed on information like a tick about to pop. He knew the job. Get in, get the girl, reason with Tat to let her go, and waltz out.
If he thought about it, he had to laugh. Who the hell was he kidding? Who were they kidding? Change the plan to: walk in and ask Tat for the girl, get shot between fifty and a hundred and fifty times, get stuffed in a drainpipe in more than one piece—then he’d have a much better chance of success.
The latest nervous Nelly chattering at him was Lauren’s boss from the news website. Mike Arneson, late twenties and clearly nervous talking to the cops, spewed more details than anyone needed the way a murder confession goes when someone is trying desperately to unburden themselves.
“She’s young, man. Twenty-four. I know she’s got no practical experience, but her connections.” He let that sit, waiting for some sort of acknowledgement or agreement from Dale. He got none. “I mean, with the mayor being her dad. I couldn’t pass up that kind of inside scoop. We’ve been hurting for hits on the site. So she came in and pitched this story on what her dad’s new initiative was going to do to the drug trade in the city. Well, shit, you can’t say no to that.”
“And you thought it was a good idea for her to go see Tat?”
“That was all her, man. She said she wanted the story from the horse’s mouth or something like that. Tell you the truth, I didn’t even know who the fuck she was talking about.”
“Did you just move here or something?”
“About a year ago.”
“Ah.”
Dale turned at the sound of the door opening. A man came in with the telltale little suitcase of a wire.
“Uh-uh. No way. I’m not wearing a wire.”
Behind the technician carrying the suitcase, another man entered. Dale’s supervisor, the chief of detectives, Barney Nolan.
“Dale, you gotta.”
“You trying to get me killed? This isn’t a sting, it’s a rescue mission. If Tat catches me with a wire—which he would about ten seconds in the door—I’d be target practice first and dog food next. You know that, Nolan.”
Nolan put his head down, showing Dale the circle of pale scalp where his hair had vacated the premises. “You’re right, you’re right. I’m trying here, okay? I don’t want to send you in naked.”
“I might as well be.”
Nolan looked Dale in the eye. Before he spoke, Dale realized, he doesn’t know yet.
“I can’t believe you volunteered for this crazy-ass assignment.”
“I didn’t have much say in it, Nolan.”
“Still, man. Shit.”
“Yea
h. Shit.”
Arneson shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Do you need anything else from me?”
Dale shook his head. “I guess not. Let me ask you this, though. Was she trying for, like, an exposé piece? Was she trying to pin something on Tat?”
“No. She said he was one of those Al Capone types who operated illegally out in the open. She wanted his opinion on the new policies. That’s all.”
“And when did those policies get released to the press?”
Arneson feigned some heavy thinking about it. “This morning, I think.”
“But she went to see Tat yesterday.”
Arneson shrugged. “Like I said. Inside information. It was gonna be a great piece. Still is, but a slightly different one, am I right?” He attempted a smile but was shot down.
Dale pulled on his jacket. Slate grey, worn elbows. A working man’s coat. “So she was the one who ended up telling him that his business was about to be shut down?” Dale turned to Nolan. “I can see how he’d be a little pissed.”
Arneson began to whine again, sounding so much like a suspect, Dale wanted to read him his rights. “I told you it was her idea. I didn’t make her go there.”
“We know you didn’t. Go home. Write about something else. This story stays here until you hear from me.”
Arneson nodded; the press had been castrated and didn’t fight back.
Dale stood. Nolan looked him over. “You’re not even going to take your piece?”
“Would you walk into Tat’s carrying a gun?”
Nolan nodded. Dale thought of one last thing.
“Can I make a phone call?”
Nolan smiled. “You’re not under arrest, Dale. You get a call if you want.”
Dale gave back a close-lipped grin. He mumbled to himself, “Yet.”
Dale stopped a mile and a half down the road from Tat’s complex to have a final face-to-face with Chief Schuster. After that, he was on his own.
“I don’t need to remind you we’re all counting on you, do I, Dale?”
“I don’t need to remind you this is a terrible idea, do I?”
Schuster sighed, frustrated and doubting his decision. “We want her alive and unharmed. I send SWAT in there and chances are good neither of those things happen.”
“I’ll do my best, Chief. This is a good-faith gesture. I know it won’t save my ass, but I need all the karma I can get.”
“We won’t be able to communicate with you until you’re out.” Schuster pulled open the door to the police van. Cool fall air hit Dale like the lash of a whip. “Meet you back here.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Dale stepped out of the van onto the four-lane road leading to the industrial park.
Four Pines Technology Park was supposed to bring jobs and new industry to the area. Four towers of office space, two warehouses, two manufacturing blocks. Shipping docks, an onsite gym, day care.
In the end, funding collapsed and the three-hundred-acre complex stood as a monument to the economic downturn. Only one tower had been fully built. Fifteen stories of glass and steel. A four-story skeleton sat rusting in the shadow of the completed building. The other two buildings hadn’t even been started beyond concrete pads. Wide concrete squares and a massive pit intended for underground parking spread out over the clearing in the woods. Driveways that led nowhere, fountains with no water, signs with no lettering gave the complex a ghost town feeling.
Tat had purchased the acreage legally and turned it into his residence, his place of business, and a refuge for his employees for them to get off the streets and out of the gutter. Being private property, the cops couldn’t search it without a warrant and somehow, those never seemed to get approved.
Ten miles out of town, Tat was out of sight and out of mind for the city’s law enforcement. And with everyone he paid off in the police force and the city government, Tat’s fortress was as safe as the White House.
Dale approached the fence surrounding the property. He’d been here before, several times, but always at night and always at Tat’s request. Dale had kicked in the doors of suspects before without knowing what dangers waited for him on the other side. He’d been shot at, threatened, stabbed once with a carrot peeler. Experience taught him not to hesitate. You step up and do the job.
The single building was a thin rectangle. The idea of the park was to have several towers, four to start with room for four more, but every office would have window. That way the buildings would each only be two offices and a hallway wide. It also helped them keep heating costs down and a few other benefits that gave the design a Green Leaf certification.
The result was one tall knife blade cutting into the sky. A samurai sword shoved hilt-first into the ground. The perfect shape for a building of Tat’s.
Dale pressed the buzzer on the gate and turned his face, smiling, to the security camera hanging overhead.
The gate buzzed and swung open, his familiarity gaining him entry. Dale sucked in a deep breath and went inside.
Lauren O’Brien had been told she looked like a mayor’s daughter during the campaign. A Hollywood casting agent’s idea of one, anyway. Blonde, pretty, slightly arrogant stare. She’d smiled her best politician’s family smile at the left-handed compliment.
So far her abduction had been the Ritz-Carlton of kidnappings. The room where Tat had put her was plush, right off his office and comfortable for a week’s vacation stay. Not at all like the cinder-block bunker she’d expected. Even her bodyguard was kind of cute, if you liked your men twice your size and mute.
When Tat entered, he didn’t bother to knock. Muscular, buzz cut, and sparking with energy, he picked up in the middle of a conversation he’d started without her.
“Not a goddamn thing yet. You believe that shit?”
From her father? Yeah, she could believe it.
“I’ve been telling you this is a bad idea.”
“No, you coming here was a bad idea. Breaking into my shit was a bad idea. Your daddy sending spies into my house was a bad idea.”
“I’m not working for my father,” she repeated for the tenth time since she’d been caught snooping around the lower floors.
“Not anymore.” He bent at the waist and stared her down. “Your ass belongs to me now. And I gots to get paid to give you back.”
Paid not in cash, but in influence. A loophole carved out of the new antidrug policy. An indefinite extension on the free pass Tat got from the cops. And maybe a little cash to smooth over the hurt.
“Have you told Tyler I’m here? Is he coming to see me?”
Her contact. Her inside man. Her boyfriend…sort of. The guy she’d been sleeping with for two months now.
“I told you, accountants don’t get to come to the top floor. Around here, everyone knows their place. Maybe you oughta learn that, girl.” Tat spun on his heel. “Time to give your daddy another call.”
Lauren could only curse to herself and punch a velvet pillow. Her plan to dig up information for her story had not gone as expected. She got into the fortress like she wanted. Tyler had done his job, even if he hadn’t know it was his job. Ever since then, things had gone to shit. But she knew her dad had a plan. He wouldn’t leave her. He’d send the cops, the FBI negotiators. Someone, right?
15TH FLOOR
Much as he couldn’t believe it, Dale’s stomach felt less twisted riding in this elevator than when he rode up to see Chief Schuster that morning. Like a model home, this tower had been completed to show all aspects of the coming technology center and job creating engine. Right down to the piped-in smooth jazz music in the elevators. Tat decided he kind of liked the smooth sounds and kept the one tiny playlist of tunes that repeated every ten minutes.
Dale focused on the buttery sounds of Kenny G’s saxophone. What was supposed to be inoffensive music while somehow managing to be about the most offensive sound Dale could think of. He actually felt relief getting off on the top floor.
Tat’s office.
Dale was met at the elevator by a hulking meathead. He wore a tight-fitting jacket over a thin T-shirt threatening to pop every seam under his ’roided out muscle mass. He patted Dale down, found nothing.
The meathead waved Dale inside.
No one could accuse Tat of having good taste. He believed that success was measured by the amount of gold-plated surfaces one had. Politely, Tat’s sprawling office could be called ornate. Realistically, the open space that took over half of the top floor looked like the palace of Versailles fucked a Miami hooker and fell backward into a vat of gold plating.
The wall paper crisscrossed with shiny gold hexagons. The carpet was a blood red. Mirrors hung so close to each other the room had a funhouse quality to it. It was enough to give you a complex, all those reflections of yourself all at once.
The couch was orange leather, the pillows animal prints, the art on the walls from the Motel 6 collection.
In the center of it all, behind his ornate, Hummer-sized desk, was Tautolu Losopo, crime kingpin. Tat had the good fortune to be named according to his Samoan upbringing with a name that also shortened to a nickname appropriate to the thick rows of tribal tattoos that snaked up both arms.
Tat’s dark olive skin bulged with muscles. His buzz cut gave his head the look of a howitzer shell. His teeth shone white in his mouth except where gold caps covered both his canines.
His desk sat against the windows a good thirty feet from the door and Tat had to raise his voice to call Dale over. “Dale, get the fuck in here, man.” White teeth and gold caps flashed at him like a werewolf snarling, but this was Tat’s version of a welcome greeting.
Dale made the long walk across the room, taking inventory of the three bodyguards and four young women in the room. The men, also Samoans, all watched him closely while the girls ignored him vehemently, examining their nails, popping gum, texting on their phones in an effort to look utterly bored by his presence.
Tat’s near boundless energy was hard to contain while sitting, but to stand would be to show respect to someone else in his place of business. Not going to happen. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”